Schooly ooly ooly

The school year has begun. I think Corbin's teacher has the reputation of being mean so that will be interesting. I talked to him about it to see if he wanted to switch teachers but he didn't want to. We will see how it goes. Gabby's teacher is kind of new so I don't know. She seems nice. It's killing Gabby that she's isn't in her best friend Audelia's class and she misses Mrs. Lyon (who was so great). Corbin hates school so I don't think it's a teacher problem as much as a Corbin problem. I already had to force him to school on Thursday and Friday crying. Awesome! It's going to be a long school year with that one. I wonder if I should home school him but I DO NOT WANT TO. That being said I don't want him going to school crying everyday either. Ugh. I did look into a part time school part time home school situation and he didn't seem interested (yay!). I hope he can learn to not be so miserable at school.

I was just home with the two littles and it was so nice! The house is so much more quiet and manageable. I've started working with Piper a little bit and she loves it. She wrote her letters for 2 hours on Friday.

We went to the church farms on Friday. There wasn't a ton there and the pears were really small so I don't think I will be canning this year. We will have some yummy fresh fruit for a bit though. It's so good fresh! Amazing.

Ryan quote, "What the heck? It's not working."
Me: "Ryan I need to wash your face." Ryan, "No! I hate that." (He's the best).

1st day of 1st Grade

1st day of 3rd grade

Lunch with just the littles

Story time

Play with Lizzie time (she's on Ryan's bum).

Gabby busting out some type of craft creation.

Gabby's art

Last week of Summer Vacation

This last week was the last week of summer vacation. I spent most of the day Monday driving to and from Arco picking up my kids from my mom's house. I super appreciate her watching my kids for 5 days. That's a long time! Thanks mom. Corbin's favorite part was when Granny let him drive the four wheeler while dumping dead flowers. Joy! Gabby liked playing with the farm cat and picking out a toy at Family Dollar. Piper's favorite part was watching the old time movie, "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" with Don Knotts. Who knows about Ryan but my mom was missing him calling out her name all day in a low, loud, raspy voice, "G-R-A-N-N-Y."

On Tuesday night I went to my friend Jen's house for a backyard girl's night. We played bunco and a two truths and a lie. I have a lot of fun friends in my ward.

The rest of the week we just kind of relaxed and enjoyed our last week of freedom. We went to several parks but other than that we didn't do much. I'm kind of excited to get going with a routine starting tomorrow. I'm pretty excited to have the day to spend with just Piper and Ryan. I think we will have some fun bonding time. I need to proactively work with Piper this year. I think she will LOVE having some one on one time. We will see what I can teach her...

On Saturday we went to the pet store and bought Spot II. I forgot to mention that Gabby lost Spot about a month ago and we never found him. I hope he escaped but I think he did not. I'm afraid we may find his corpse some day. Gross. So far I haven't noticed any bad smell. Spot II was purchased and Scott came up with the name Lizzie. She is even uglier to me than Spot. I will have to get used to her. Spot had a deformed eye and I think this made his mobility limited so he was the perfect pet while we had him. He would sit on Gabby's shoulder FOREVER. He hardly moved. It's amazing we didn't lose him earlier. More than once Gabby would leave him somewhere and forget about him and he would still be where she left him totally still. Lizzie moves quite quickly and Corbin already lost her once this morning. We will see how it goes! Pets...not my favorite!

Ryan quote, "Oh my gosh, it's so crazy." (Giggles of laughter) Gabby, "Ryan's having a conversation." Ryan, "It's so funny!"

Dave (google friend) gave Scott a google cardboard last weekend. You experience virtual reality by putting your phone into it. The kids have been fighting over it all week.

Jen's backyard party.

Kleiner Park

Lizzie

Lizzie (She's got a spotted head, orange middle, and different colored spotted tail). Yikes. Ha. Oh and Gabby's name idea was Orange and Piper's was Lorengia. 

Camping, Seattle trip

Last week was a crazy fun filled week. On Monday I packed the kids up and we headed to Alturus Lake (near Redfish lake). My phone GPS was confused and told me it would take almost three hours and it took 4. That was unfortunate, especially since I was driving with my kids alone. We arrived and set up our things and headed to the beach even though it was not warm enough to play in the water. Kids don't seem to care about such things. The adults sat and watched the kids play in the water and the sand. Nothing much happened between that other than Ryan falling down 10,000 times it felt like, and when I say falling down I mean full body face plant belly flops. This boy may have gotten my coordination skills and they aren't good. He also refused to where any type of shoes for more than 5 minutes and then he would cry when he stepped on something. Genius! Piper mostly stuck to my side along with Ryan the whole time. She did play with Gabby and some cousins a little bit but not much. Gabby and Corbin had a great time playing with their cousins.

The conversations around the campfire are always the best part about camping (especially because Ryan was asleep) ha. Monday night Piper was complaining about being sick so I was hanging out with her in my parent's camper when she started to barf a little. Time went on and she barfed a ton. I thought she would be okay after that and I went to sleep in my van with Ryan and left Piper with my parents. I was wrong. Piper woke up dry heaving every 15 minutes all night long. Sorry about that mom! The next day I had a case of diarrhea and let me tell you that having diarrhea while camping and using an outhouse is FANTASTIC! Luckily I took some Imodium AD and got in control although I still had an upset stomach the whole day. Around 5:00 pm Ryan barfed twice and started in with the diarrhea. At this point I would have just high tailed it home but my kids were actually going home with my parents the next day so we had to stick it out. He continued to have diarrhea and that night he and I joined my parents in the camper because it was going to be FREEZING that night. He ended up barfing one time in the night. The weather on Tuesday was cold. We all ended up wearing our winter coats the whole day. A lot of the kids still managed to get on swimming suits and go play at the beach while the adults watched in their winter coats. My dad ended up getting the bug along with two of my brothers. I'm not sure if there were any other victims. Sorry about that!

On Wednesday morning my parents headed home with my kids and I headed back to Boise. Scott bought tickets to go to the Dota International in Seattle months and months ago. My parents agreed to watch our kids while we went. We haven't been on a trip in over 4 years. It was time! It was especially nice that I actually had a little mini vacation from my kids at home before my actual vacation. On Wednesday I still didn't feel great and I ended up laying pretty low and tried to rest so I wouldn't be sick on my trip. On Thursday I was feeling better and I got a lot of stuff done around the house before we left. That night Scott and I flew to Seattle. We stayed in a nice hotel in Bellevue. On Friday morning we had breakfast at the hotel that was not continental. It was spendy but we were on vacation! We walked around Bellevue a little bit. We were right in the hub of downtown and we checked out ridiculous stores like Neiman Marcus and Gucci and Scott showed me the Valve building which is the company that produces his favorite video games. After that we drove to downtown Seattle so Scott could watch the Dota tournament. His childhood friend Dave lives in Seattle now and took the day off and watched with Scott. I decided it would be a good time to go visit my sister Kelsey who just had her first baby 2 weeks ago. I was pretty nervous to drive from downtown Seattle to her house and back but I sucked it up and did it. I have figured out my phone GPS which is amazing. I did pretty good driving there, I only cut someone off and got flipped off once. Ha. It took me about an hour to get to her house. I just chilled at her house for several hours. I held her baby and we watched lots of Parks and Rec and I took a nap. I eventually mustered up the courage to go back and drive back to downtown Seattle and pick Scott up. I did it! Phew. I am really growing up. Ha.

Saturday morning we ended up meeting some friends for a long brunch. After that Scott and I headed back to the Dota Tournament and spent the day there. Lucky for me I have lots of experience of hanging out for days in a gymnasium during Drill Team competitions in high school so it wasn't that big of a deal. It was crazy to be there though. The nerds go all out people! It was an experience for sure. It was pretty great to be there. I mostly checked out facebook during the games. At one point I took a nap and then I went out and read a book for awhile. We bought tickets to go on the space needle at 7:00 pm and after that we headed over to some Royce and Annika's house to spend the night. We haven't hung out with them since our friends cruise over 4 years ago. Royce and Dave are Scott's good childhood friends who both happened to get jobs in Seattle (one works for Google, one for Amazon) and they are in the same ward there. We had a BBQ and talked and played games until 1:30 in the morning. It was fun. Now if only we could move to Seattle and join them. It is so beautiful. We came back to Boise today. I still need to drive to Arco at some point to pick up my children...

Corbin and Cooper built a fort. They also went on lots of hikes. Corbin wanted to hike the whole time.

Great Ryan face.

Beach time!

Big Crew

Talks around the campfire, so good. 

My kids at Granny's

Taking them on a 4 wheeler ride.

Granny putting them to work

Cool butterflies in the Neiman Marcus store. Cool!

Heck yes!

Valve headquarters

Driving past the space needle

A jumbo tron of the international was set up outside for people that didn't buy tickets.

Indian tacos...yum!

Watching the events

Hall of Heroes

Huge screen to watch the games. The stadium was packed with nerds. The players are down on the floor.

Top of the Space Needle

Close Call

On Tuesday last week we met Anna and her kids to go swimming at a private pool that Anna has access to. We were the only ones at the pool and the kids were having a great time. After awhile a neighbor who lives about 1/4 acre away came out and asked us if our kids could quiet down. She said they were quite loud. We couldn't believe it. It was 11:30 am and the kids were NOT being loud. I mean they were kids at a pool so there was the normal level of loud happening. That was so annoying to me. Go in the house and put in ear plugs lady! It's too bad she bought a house next to a pool. Oh well. That was kind of annoying.

Ryan is such a little fish with his floaties on and he just swims like crazy, but he was kind of tired and crabby and after about an hour he just wanted to sit on my lap. He sat on my lap forever and ate snacks and stayed right next to me and had his floaties off. I wasn't even thinking about it because he was right next to me. Another mom came with her kids and I was watching them come in when all of the sudden Anna said, "who's that in the pool." I looked and screamed "RYAN!" I ran over and snatched him out of the pool. That was probably the worst moment of my life. I think I will have that image of Ryan under the water in my head forever. I'm so glad Anna noticed when she did. I feel so guilty that I was so dumb to forget that he didn't have his floaties on and let him get away from my side. AHHH! Man crap like that happens in an instant and it's terrifying. We had a similar instance with my niece Greta in St. George. I am FIRED from pool duty. Swimming pools are scary and I obviously need to be more diligent.

On Friday night we went as a family to Roaring Springs. Corbin and Gabby had free roaring springs passes from reading at school and they were begging all summer to go. Even with the free passes it was cheaper to skip on the passes and go to the family slide night with a sprite can for the best deal. It was still expensive and Gabby, Piper, and Ryan had fun for about an hour and then they were over it! The slide night is from 6:00 to 10:00 p.m. and it was a cloudy night and they were freezing. Scott ended up taking them home and Corbin and I stuck it out until 10:00. It was freezing! We did our best not to turn into Popsicle's and get our money's worth and go on as many rides as possible. Around 9:30 it was late and cold so the lines were zero. Corbin and I froze our buns and kept going strong until the park closed at 10:00. That was some fun bonding time between he and I.

I've been getting ready to take my kids camping for the Beal reunion starting tomorrow. I was planning on bailing out because camping is not my favorite (anymore) and tons of work but I decided I didn't want my kids to miss out so I'm sucking it up. My mom is helping me with the food which helps a TON since we don't have proper camping gear to cook with and it's less stress with planning so thanks mom! I have gathered half of my house in a pile in the garage for us to go in the morning. Wish us luck and hopefully no one will drown in the lake!